plans
to move to Los Angeles. We had visited Mom and Pop, who had already moved
to L.A., and I had gotten a job at Paramount Movie Studios as a set
erector. Since the war was still going, you had to have gas rationing
stamps to travel. I wrote to L.A. and after a 30 day wait, they sent me
enough stamps to get there. We were packed up and ready to leave when the
war ended. It was a wonderful moment for all of us, but since we were
living so far out of town, we didn't see any of the big celebrations. We
celebrated by moving. We got to Stockton before we needed gas. I was
driving my old Plymouth pickup I had bought for this move, and Dorothy was
driving the '41 De Soto, and we were packed to the gills. The first gas
station we pulled into the attendant said, "We don't take those
stamps anymore, the war was over last night." We were surprised we
wouldn't need the ration coupons. The attendant in the gas station laughed
and said there was a guy in a little earlier and when the attendant told
him he didn't need the stamps, the man said angrily, "What do you
mean I don't need those stamps? I paid a dollar apiece for them on the
black market." He was going up to Oregon and Washington on vacation,
and he was very upset. Dorothy wanted to buy some sunglasses, so we
stopped at a little town called Greenfield, just out of Bakersfield. Dale
was riding with Dorothy, and she had left her keys in the DeSoto, so she
told him to go get them. He got them, but put them in his pocket. She was
busy buying the sunglasses, and didn't notice. The boys decided to trade
cars, so Gene rode with Dorothy and Dale, and the car keys, went with me
in the pickup. Dorothy realized Dale had the keys after I had driven off.
She went over to a couple who were just getting ready to leave and
explained the situation to them.

They
said they would do what they could. As they passed me, a few miles down
the road, they yelled that I had the keys to Dorothy's car. I knew I
didn't have the keys, but I looked over and Dale was crying, miserable
because he had remembered he had the keys just after we pulled out from
the station. We were already part way up the steep ridge-route grade,
and I didn't want to go back down in the loaded old truck, so I pulled
over, caught a ride on a northbound truck and took the keys back to
Dorothy. She was happy to see me with the keys, but mad because I had
left four-year old Dale in the pickup by himself. We arrived in Los
Angeles and moved in with Mom and Pop because there was nothing to rent.
We could have bought a house with the $5,000 we had saved, but Pop
wanted me to wait until we could buy a lot and some lumber and build our
own. Pop was selling real estate at the time, and about six months
later, he bought a small, one-bedroom house and rented it to us. We
needed two bedrooms, but we were happy to be in our own house. Gene was
in the fifth grade and Dale was in the third, and Dorothy had become
pregnant with our third son, Dan. By the time Dan was born, I had built
two more two-bedroom houses next door to where we were living, and we
moved into one of them. I was working full time at Paramount Studios at
the time. I worked there three years, building sets. I saw a lot of
movie stars, and they were all nice to me. I talked to some of them,
like Fred McMurray. Bob Hope was making "Monsieur Beaucoup"
when I got there, and Heddy Lamar was making "Sampson and
Delilah." The work was hard on my back, and I longed to get away
from standing and working on the studio's concrete floors. In fact, I
had been going to their doctors nearly every day, but my back still
hurt.